Reads of the Week: Declining Healthcare Quality, School Choice in West Virginia, and Remote Work Tax Problems

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Learn more about how the Writing Fellows Program can help boost your writing career!

The Real Cost of CON Laws: Quality of Care Under Pressure During the Pandemic by Elise Amez-Droz (Summer 2019) in Discourse Magazine

For a long time, Butch Slaughter didn’t really give certificate-of-need (CON) laws and their implications much thought. He was too busy running a successful physical therapy clinic in the populous city of Jackson, Mississippi. But with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, all that changed. Suddenly, he felt the encroaching impact of state regulations on his hopes to diversify his business and meet the needs of a growing number of homebound patients.

A physical therapist for 45 years, Butch started out in college studying chemical engineering, but he switched to physical therapy because he wanted to work with people. One of the first graduates of the physical therapy school at the University of Mississippi, he soon realized he’d made the right choice. Physical therapy allowed him to connect with a diverse clientele in a variety of settings—the elderly, chronic pain patients, athletes, people with everyday ankle and foot injuries…

School Choice Is Coming to Union Stronghold West Virginia by Christian Barnard (Spring 2019) in Reason

On March 18, the West Virginia Senate passed a landmark education bill to create the nation’s largest education savings account (ESA) program, which would let parents withdraw their children from public schools and allow them to take the funds that would have been spent by the state and spend them on private school tuition, tutoring, or homeschooling expenses. The bill, which will most likely be signed by Gov. Jim Justice (R) later this week, would be a huge victory for school choice proponents and families who have become disillusioned with their residentially assigned public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic…

States Are Out of Excuses About Remote Work and Taxation by Andrew Wilford (Spring 2017) in the RealClearMarkets

The case against protecting remote workers from pandemic-related tax changes was never a strong one. With the passage of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, it’s gotten even weaker.

Since early on in the pandemic, I’ve been warning (over and over and over and over) about the need for Congress to address how states handle the tax treatment of remote-working Americans. The number of Americans potentially subject to higher tax bills or even double taxation because they’re now working from home and no longer crossing state lines can be measured in the millions. Unfortunately, with the earliest state tax deadlines less than a month away, time is running out for Congress to act…